Keeper of Dreams
by silentsky93
Summary: When a complete stranger accidentally ends up in the body of Iggy, things get complicated. But is he as new to the flock's story as he thinks? Meanwhile, Itex has their own plans that will not be forgotten until they are set into motion...
1. Blade

**Disclaimer -** Maximum Ride belongs to James Patterson and any related persons/companies. I do not own any part of Maximum Ride, however, any original characters and/or ideas belong to me. Hope you enjoy!

P.S. Chapter 1 edits made.

* * *

That's how he watched her die.

With the blade shaking in his trembling, bloodied hands.

He wanted his own heart to stop, too – being _there_, alive, awake…

He was almost certain that it would simply tear him asunder and leave nothing else behind.

The memory of that voice, and its impression in his mind:

"It's okay. You don't need to dream anymore."

How they had lied.

_How they had lied._

The blade fell from his hands.

It clattered, metal falling against earth.

"Please… _don't die, don't die!" _

* * *

"God, Thomas, you are so full of crap."

Thomas was smacked on the back of the head.

The papers in his hands scattered, flying out across the hall and landing on the linoleum.

The group of boys, all substantially larger and more muscular than Thomas, began to laugh. Then, two grabbed Thomas by the ankles, flipping him so that he hung head down, before shoving him face-first into the nearest trash receptacle.

"Freak!" One mocked loudly, laughing.

Their footsteps faded into the empty hallway.

"Such a retard," another scoffed.

When at last the group disappeared, a substantially irritated Thomas tipped his small, thin frame backwards, spilling the contents of the trashcan across the hallway as he crawled out with a sigh.

However, being shoved in with the contents of yesterday's lunch never surprised the boy anymore. It happened regularly and predictably, like clockwork, to the point where he expected it as he expected sixth period homework.

Thomas walked out over the hallway floor, gathering the papers that were scattered across it. They were mostly drawings: drawings of heroes, warriors, warlocks, and maybe an occasional giant robot or dragon. Thomas had never been someone who preferred to live in reality. He needed to imagine.

Like now – he thought of how it could be like in a movie. As he was stooped over, picking up his papers, a charming, overwhelmingly attractive girl would come along, bending over to help him. And then –

A voice like a violin being played with sandpaper scraped against his ears.

"Young man, what on earth are you doing out of class?"

He looked up.

Standing over him was a 75-year-old woman with her arms crossed, complete with a perm, horn-rimmed glasses, and a set of rather yellowed, crooked teeth.

"I, uh, was dumped into the trash can again?"

She sighed.

"Well, Thomas, what did you say this time?"

"Well, it was Jake," Thomas explained, "I told him, I flew outside of his house once. Is that a problem or something?"

Her wrinkled face contorted in revulsion, before she grabbed the boy by the wrist, half pulling him, half dragging him, down the hallway.

"For the last time, Thomas," she muttered, "You need to stop carrying on about these fairy tales of yours. You're not a child, and your little stories aren't real. It's time you _grew up_ already."

She stormed through the door of the front office, leaving Thomas at a row of chairs against the back window.

"Wait here," she demanded.

He sat as told, setting his drawings aside, and looked to a bird singing cheerfully from beyond the glass.

It cocked its head, looking at him.

The boy smirked back.

"Shut up," he spoke quietly, "It wasn't even real. But you still got me into this."

Thomas waited.

His mind grew heavy beneath the warm haze of sunlight spilling through the window.

Slowly, he closed his eyes, slipping deep into the comforting lull of sleep.

* * *

It was stuffy bordering on the smelly, but with a pine scent.

If Thomas had to guess, he would have guessed the boys cabin at his childhood summer camp.

He rolled over, and opened his eyes, blinking.

"It's so dark in here," he muttered, "Where's the light?"

He fumbled, swinging his hands out blindly until they found a lamp. He twisted the power switch, several times, but never saw so much as a spark.

"Dead," he sighed.

He tossed the sheets aside, moving his feet downward, only to come to a crashing fall, his face smashing against the wood-paneled floor.

With a wince, he pushed himself up, crawling out slowly on all fours, until he grasped a doorknob and twisted it.

He flung the door open.

Still no light.

Rising to a stoop, arms stretched out to either side, he went out through the hallways that stemmed from the room. He moved cautiously, leaning up against a wall, smacking his hands out gracelessly as he felt for anything that wasn't wood paneling.

Then, suddenly:

"What are you _doing?_" a bewildered girl asked.

He jolted, then stumbled as he almost lost his carefully held-together balance.

"Wh-where did you come from?"

"Down… the… _hall?_"

His hands floundered out again, this time, finding a latched window.

"Aha!"

He grabbed the latch and threw it upwards.

It opened to darkness.

There was a breeze, but yet again, no light.

"Hey," Thomas asked the girl, "So, uh, you seen a light bulb anywhere?"

"Um… why would you need one?"

"Uh, gee, I dunno," He threw his arms up, gesturing wildly to the blackness all around him, "_Because_?"

"Iggy, just quit messing around and go cook breakfast."

Thomas – or rather, Thomas in the form of Iggy – stiffened like a quail before a speeding car.

"_But, Max, I can't see anything!_"

"Oh, wow, a _revelation_," Max scoffed, "Why should that matter? Just get the eggs done in ten. And, a little less salt on mine this time, por favor?"


	2. Confusion and Knowledge

Thomas raised his - or rather Iggy's - eyebrows.

The girl – Max - pushed past him with a sigh. An unusually _loud_ sigh. It didn't even come at a natural volume, but like vocals amplified by the stereo speakers of a concert hall.

The question of how he knew her name arose once, perhaps, but this question never remained long enough to receive an answer. Thomas' flighty mind drifted away from this almost immediately, as it almost always did.

"Now how do I make eggs?" he murmured to himself.

A smaller figure pushed past.

Then another.

And another.

The sounds of their voices and movements rose in a booming crescendo.

"I'm hungry!" a child's voice groaned.

"Ow! Don't shove me."

"Iggy, you said we would build more bombs!"

"Hey, Max, you said we would pick strawberries today, right?"

"No, sweetie, it might rain, maybe tomorrow, okay?"

He screwed his eyes shut, gripping his scalp by a clenched hand. The heavy sound hammered at his skull, his entire head flooded in throbbing pain.

There was a short, jerking, tug at his sleeve.

He stumbled again.

Thomas became increasingly aware of how the legs attached to him weren't his. They were muscular, but too long, too awkward, giving the usually small boy the feeling of being on stilts.

"Iggy, you okay?"

"Fang's right," Max said, her voice crossed with concern, "You're not doing so great today. You've been… weird."

"I'm fine, you guys just need to quiet down," he said, moving his hand down with a sigh.

"But… we were just, like, talking," A younger girl said, perplexed.

The youngest voice didn't speak. He had heard her, before, but now, her voice was absent from the others. But to him, the strangest part was, _he felt her_. She was standing just a little behind him, the presence of her coy, unseen, Cheshire cat smile making itself uncomfortably apparent.

"Now, eggs," he said, doing his best to shake the eerie presence from his mind, "You all wanted eggs? Um… Okay."

They expected something, whoever they were. There was no question in it. The task had been presented, and so, there had to be a solution. But to Thomas' dismay, figuring out how to cook eggs without any light was simply too far-fetched to plan ahead in theory, much less in practice.

He had to just focus on walking, he told himself firmly. He started in small, unsteady steps, relocating the boundaries of the floor and the wall by shuffling his feet forward. Then, gaining confidence, he straightened, forcing his gait into a more confident, natural stride down the hallway, even though he wobbled and tipped as he did so.

"_Iggy, stop!_"

His foot swooped through open air, his stomach giving a sickening lurch as he plummeted downwards.

* * *

Thomas' eyes snapped open.

This time, he was standing on the ground.

Smaller.

Much smaller.

A pill bug, in fact.

A clean, sterilized room opened up before him.

He saw someone, crouched up inside a cage, head buried in their knees. But, whether this person was male or female, adult or child, he couldn't tell.

He inched his way forward, towards the figure, curiosity urging him onwards.

Then a door creaked open.

Two white-coated men stepped out from the doorway, their faces too high above to even distinguish.

"Not another bug. Damn infestations."

"Oh, it's nothing – see? Just take this newspaper and –"

_Smack._

_

* * *

_

A stack of school newspapers hit the ground.

"Ah, sorry, they wanted me to throw those by recycling. Did you have a good sleep, Thomas?"

The school office was empty of the staff now. The only person who remained was a man Thomas didn't recognize, hanging a white lab coat on a metal hook near the opposite window. Thomas watched as he then turned, moved across the room, and drew up a small wooden chair directly across from him, leaning forward so that he met the boy's gaze.

Thomas blinked, still groggy and warm from sleep, and still trying to grasp back onto reality.

"I guess," he mumbled, "But… it was kinda weird. Well, really weird."

"I see," the other said.

Thomas eyed the lab coat.

"Do you kill rollie pollies?" he asked randomly.

"Excuse me?"

"Nothing, nothing."

The man followed Thomas' eyes back to the lab coat.

"Oh, that - I was in a hurry out from work, so I didn't get a chance to take it off," the other explained, "Now, if you don't mind… I need to understand some things. And I need to understand them now. You have never had a dream in which you were yourself, correct?"

"Well, that's a lame question," Thomas replied with a small scoff, "Who dreams as themselves?"

"Perhaps," the man replied vaguely.

"Wait," Thomas started slowly, "So… who are you again?"

"My name is Jeb Batchelder," the man replied, "And I need to know one last thing – does the name 'Max' mean anything to you?"


	3. The Crime of Thomas

_A/N_: Apologies for the eternity or two since my last upload... life got in the way. Fortunately, I intend to continue and can, so, hope you enjoy!

* * *

Thomas blinked.

Jeb Batchelder stared back at him.

Thomas flicked his gaze to the clock, to the pencil sharpener, to the bookcase – anywhere that was _away._

How did this man know what was going on inside his head? Or, much more disconcerting, what happened when he was _asleep_.

What was he supposed to say?

_Yes, of course, odd stranger, we are talking about the exact same figment of my imagination. _

Jeb sighed, and rose to his feet, pushing the chair aside with a loud scrape.

"Well, then, seems I have no choice."

Thomas exhaled in relief.

Finally, he could go home.

"You're coming with me."

"Huh?"

Jeb seized Thomas' forearm, dragging him upward, out of the office, down the hallway, and out of the school's front entrance. All the while, various students and staff members would cast him sidelong glances, but, never interfered.

And all the while, Thomas wriggled against Jeb's grip like an unwilling puppy.

"But my parents – "

"Will not mind in the least if I borrow you."

Thomas frowned. This much, he had to admit, this part was true. His mother had a tendency to waste long stretches of time on social networking sites when she was at home. His father, on the other hand, had a tendency to appear constipated whenever Thomas spoke and would always leave the room grumbling incoherently.

His imminent kidnapping would hardly pass their minds.

"So what are you going to do? Sell my innards to the aliens while feeding the non-vital ones to wild condors?"

"What? No. You're here to save someone's life."

Jeb strode towards an ambulance parked at the edge of a parking lot.

"Whose life?"

"You just met him."

"Met who?"

"Iggy."

"But he's just some guy from some dream I had."

"Oh, no, Thomas," he said, "He's very real. Just as much as you and I. And you just killed him."


	4. Matters of Dreaming

Thomas stopped moving so abruptly that he slid through Jeb's grip as Jeb continued forward.

"_I… is this… are you –_"

"You're listening now? Good," Jeb said curtly, "Let me rephrase… you _almost_ killed him."

"But, how? I was just sleeping."

"You're what is referred to as a 'Dream Keeper'," Jeb explained, holding open the ambulance door and ushering Thomas inside, "You have the ability to access minds through REM sleep the same way a computer accesses other computers wirelessly. The only problem is… you're also a type Invasive Parasitic, or InPar, for short."

Thomas took a seat opposite Jeb in the ambulance. Aside from the two of them and one woman in a lab coat, it was empty.

"InPar?"

"When you inhabit a host," Jeb said, "You'll stay for a brief amount of time, absorb residual traces of information in their heads – names, phone numbers, recipes, whatever's at the surface. And you'll have either partial or total control of their minds and bodies. But once you leave, the host's major brain functions shut down about half of the time. Involuntary things might stay up – like breathing – but the host will essentially go into a coma. We don't know how it works, just that it does."

"Wait… so all this time, every time I dream, I've been…?"

"Don't worry, we've been keeping track," Jeb assured him, "The upside is, compared with most, you really don't dream as much as you think – and like I said, half the time, a coma never occurs. Someone will just wake up, not knowing how they got where they are. And when your dreaming does cause problems, we can fix it. The symptoms are obvious. A perfectly healthy person will just drop down, and we'll send an intern in to correct the situation. The host will come out of the coma unharmed, though, somewhat confused. So, we'll feed them some story about a benign disease, and send them on their way. Although, I can't say things have panned out as well for the various wild animals you've inhabited."

"And that's the bad news?"

"No," Jeb said, "The bad news is, my people are the only ones that can fix this."

"So… what does this have to do with me?"

"Everything," Jeb said, "We need you to go back and _be_ Iggy. Just because he's breathing doesn't mean that he'll be safe for much longer… especially without immediate attention. And we're going to make sure of this, starting with making sure you get into the right body."

Jeb made a quick gesture towards the white-coated woman.

"You can put him under now."

Thomas stiffened.

The lab-coated woman turned, and guided Thomas down onto a stretcher, forcing him supine.

"Remember to keep yourself sitting down or in bed," Jeb said, "And, preferably, alone. Don't say too much. Tell them you just don't feel well, something. I would think they already suspect enough after that last mishap, we don't need them asking more. Downplay the collapse. We'll brief you more the next time you wake up, but for now, just assure them that nothing has gone wrong."

"But how do I do that if something _is_ wrong?"

"Use your imagination. Just… not too much."

"But, wait, why - "

An oxygen mask was fitted over Thomas' face.

"And… count back from ten."

"Ten… nine… eight…"


End file.
